Self Portrait

           As mentioned in my previous post we learned that typography had a major contribution to graphic design in the 1920's. So that we could get a better idea of what it was like designing new fonts and styles of typography we were design a self portrait of sorts in that we were to take our initials and design them into a custom made font. Because my favorite art style is cubism - art deco I decided to go for the more geometric approach. Here is the result: 

The Bauhaus Masters

            In my graphic design class we learn that one of the most important and crucial element of design is typography. Without typography your design cannot convey the message that the graphics are trying to put forth. Text and type had always been present in graphic design before however it wasn’t until 1919 at a design school in Germany, based upon revolutionizing design, called the Bauhaus did typography make its true importance known. The Bauhaus was the most significant subject of this course that stood out to me and really sparked my interest. I love the designs that came out of the art movement of the time and was really intrigued by many of the artists, however there were three in particular who caught my eye: Max Bill, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Joost Schmidt.

            The original preliminary course instructor for the Bauhaus was Johannes Itten. Because of his profound goals for teaching his students he soon became the center of artistic education at the Bauhaus, believing that each student must find their true artistic abilities before settling for one medium. Soon however Bauhaus director Walter Gropius began questioning Itten’s design style which ultimately led to Itten’s downfall. His replacement was none other than Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian who came to the Bauhaus in the hopes of exploring painting, photography, film, sculpture, and graphic design. In his explorations he used many new materials such as acrylic resin and plastic as used new techniques such as photomontage and photogram, kinetic motion, light and transparency. Because Moholy-Nagy brought such great new forms of art to the Bauhaus he made a dramatic influence on the school and struck the interest of Gropius, promoting him to “Prime Minister of the Bauhaus.”

            As we discussed typography more and more in my class Moholy-Nagy’s typefaces and graphic designs really stood out to me more and more. He used a technique he called typophoto which was basically the beginning of modern graphic design in that it integrated text and image. Most graphics in design at the time were made by hand mostly through painting or drawing, however Moholy-Nagy criticized the painters of the Bauhaus by pressing the superiority of photography.

            As with all good things many people, particularly the government, in Weimar Germany had issued with the Bauhaus. In 1924 the Bauhaus was closed down and director Gropius urged it continue in Dessau. In the fall of 1926 the school was indeed moved and reopened at a new complex in Dessau. One such student who moved to the Bauhaus for his studies was Max Bill. At the Bauhaus Bill’s studies focused on painting, architecture, engineering, sculpture, and product and graphic design. It wasn’t until he left school however that his work began to become recognized. Bill began by designing buildings however it was his product designs that came first, most notably his stool that could be used as either a shelf or a bedside table as well. Many people were so taken by Bill’s architecture work that he was contracted to design the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Florence. Much like the other two designers Joost Schmidt was also a graphic design student from the Bauhaus however not much was said about him other than he designed a poster for the Bauhaus in Weimar Germany.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Max Bill

Max Bill

Max Bill

Joost Schmidt

Joost Schmidt

Joost Schmidt

Constructivism and De Stijl

            With World War I come and gone, cubism started branching off into multiple subgenres. During the 1920’s Russia was undergoing many changes to its political structure, through civil war between the Czar loyalists and the Bolsheviks’ Red Army. Despite the civil turmoil erupting all across the country, creativity blossomed and changed much about how graphic design stands today. Russian avant-garde artists quickly adapted to cubism and futurism and found common themes that resonated between the two. With these common themes they created a subgenre called cubo-futurism which experimented and focused a lot on typography.

            During the time frame that artist Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovski was working with ROSTA an artists named Kasimir Malevich was founding his own style of artwork that he called suprematism. Suprematism took cubo-futurism a step further, rejecting all representations and simply using expression to connect with people. Malevich once said that art should be an “expression of feeling, seeking no practical values, no ideas, no promised land.”

            Color became a very important issue to deal with for artwork of this time. Malevich firmly believed that color and form were the two most crucial points of artwork and should be the most effective elements of design. This same idea was held with the artists of another new style of artwork called De Stijl from Netherlands in the summer of 1917. It was founded by Theo van Doesburg who later collaborated with Piet Mondrian, Bart Anthony van der Leck, and Pieter Oud. They created a style of artwork for the movement that closely related to Malevich’s in the sense that cubism played a major role through abstract geometric shapes. What really set off De Stijl from its former movement was its use of color. It used color as a structural element alongside geometric shapes, for example red was a very strong contrasting color symbolizing rebellion and was therefore used often in printing and graphic design.

            De Stijl also made its way into architecture where artists like Van Doesburg and Gerrit Reitveld were designing and constructing buildings that were extremely profound. Doesburg was using De Stijl to design shapes with asymmetrical marriages. Meanwhile Rietveld designed the Schroeder House which was very radical for the time. So radical in fact that neighbors threw rocks and the children living there were taunted and made fun of by classmates.

            Before the war had finished Cubism had taken hold in and were widely favored in Russia and the Netherlands yet there was the gaping split in design in between both countries. After the War had ended however the bridge between the two was being built as smaller countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland adopted these styles. One such artists influenced by De Stjl was Henryk Berlewi. In Germany Berlewi felt that design had been killed with illusions that proved to be major downfalls in his opinion to modern art. He then pushed his theory of mecho-faktura in which he “mechanized painting and graphic design”. In doing this he eliminated any three dimensional features he believed were prevalent in the artwork around him. From here his work was introduced into the Polish community where it later reached into Russia to connect the gap that had been opened by the War.

Black Square - Malevich

Kasamir Malevich

Kasamir Malevich

Henryk Berlewi

Henryk Berlewi

Henryk Berlewi

Henryk Berlewi

Kasamir Malevich

Art Deco and War Posters

           Cubism continued its influence into the 1920’s and 30’s becoming what is today known as art deco. During the time period in between World War I and World War II traveling was being majorly promoted across America and Europe. Many graphic designers of the time used art deco to create posters for railways and the London Underground, as well as cruise lines and travel poster by plane. Three designers of the time really stood out to me and I found myself being captivated by their artwork: Kauffer, Carlu, and Cooper.
           Edward McKnight Kauffer lived a troubled childhood that led to him traveling to the Art Institute in Chicago and then eventually to Europe to study graphic design. In 1913 while studying in Chicago a New York Times article forced Kauffer to rethink his time at the Art Institute, which resulted in his decision to move to London where he designed many war posters. His Poster Daily Herold poster is credited to be flawed in the text, however his graphic is so inspirational it caught the attention of Winston Churchill who contracted him to design the emblem for the Royal Flying Crops. Aldous Huxley responded to Kauffer’s designs that they contradict many graphic designs of the time that carry into today’s modern advertisements flaunting money and sex as a means to grab attention. I find this to be extremely refreshing and a great tool for a designer to be able to use in their work.

Like Kauffer Jean Carlu also had a hard early life. At age eighteen he fell under a trolley car which severed his arm and forced him to learn to draw with his left arm. This proved to be a great challenge that he quickly overcame as World War I approached and he gave up his dream of architecture to apply his visual communicative skills to designing War propaganda for his France. The science mentality he had for architecture helped him to develop his designs in the art deco style. He used sharp and rigid lines to indicate tension and alertness but used curves and soft edges as breathing space signifying relaxation.

            In England during this time Austin Cooper continued the tradition of art deco after using collage designs to ignite emotional attachment and memories by compiling different cutouts of landmarks. In 1924 Cooper shifted completely into art deco by designing completely in geometric shapes and color to help further develop communication posters for the London Underground.

Edward Kauffer

Edward Kauffer

Edward Kauffer

Jean Carlu

Jean Carlu

Jean Carlu

Austin Cooper

Austin Cooper

Austin Cooper

Cubism

           Cubism has had a major role in my interest in art starting from a very young age. I come from a family of engineers and have a mother who studied art history herself so the combination of geometric patterns and shapes mixed into artwork has always fascinated me. Next to Monet and Van Gough, Picasso is one of my favorite artists. It was his work that started the cubist movement which challenged the organic design style of the Renaissance that had been prevalent for the last four hundred years. What influenced Picasso to begin to paint in this style was the geometry that was seen in African and Iberian sculpture, and fabrics. Cubism allowed designers challenged space and human emotion thru a whole new lens, by separating figures into geometrical frames the cubist artwork had multiple shapes that were visible from different angles.

           In 1910 Picasso took cubism to a new level with fellow artist Georges Braque, the two created analytical cubism. Picasso and Braque made it an intention to look at the artwork from multiple viewpoints and manipulate the artwork so that the shapes would appear from multiple viewpoints. The differences between cubism and analytical cubism are subtle but prominent; analytical cubism makes manipulating multiple viewpoints deliberate while it is simply a byproduct in cubism. Analytical cubism lasted until 1912 when Picasso and Braque introduced collage work into their design. Texture became a huge part of cubism with the influence of collage work as the pieces of collage work could signify certain objects while the painting itself could provide the color and background shapes as needed. Typography and letterforms often came into play in the new evolved Cubism, they were used to emphasize meaning more often than not.

In 1913 the art movement took a much simpler turn with synthetic cubism. This style focused more around characteristics and visuals of artwork rather than putting meaning to paper. Artwork such as Juan Gris’s Fruit Bowl 1916 is such an example of this. Gris became a very important figure in synthetic cubism; his work acting as a middle ground to geometric patterns and perception. Around this time cubism was taken away from the sharpness of past cubist’s and centered around shapes with curvature such as cones and spheres. Fernand Legar and Paul Cezanne attested to this style by advising artists to “treat nature in terms of the cylindrical, and the sphere and the cone” (Cezanne).

            Cubism was the first of many new art styles to crop up around the twentieth century due to new rises in technology. It was because of this movement that artists started connecting geometric patterns to art that paved the way for other greatly impactful styles such as futurism, dada, surrealism, and expressionism. 

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) 'Factory, Horta de Ebbo', 1909 (oil on canvas)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Girl with Mandolin (1910)

Juan Gris (1887-1927) Fruit Bowl, Vintage Cubism Art Print

Hiroshige and Hokusai

           In 1853, American Matthew C. Perry led a naval fleet into Tokyo Bay and forced Japan to ally itself with the American Army. It was the last decades up until this day that marked the last years of non-international Japanese History, a time in which Japanese art and lifestyles were completely different. Ukiyo-e was a nationally widespread popular genre from the 17^th to the 19^th centuries, it was a genre that produced many great artists such as Katsushika Hokusai and Ando Hiroshige. These artists were extremely successful painters and printmakers from the school of printmaking. Ukiyo-e was an art style popular during the great Edo period and as such was marketed towards the wealthy people of Edo during the time.

            Hokusai and Hiroshige were very similar in their lifestyles; both had periods of their lives where their artwork was made up primarily of landscape artwork not prominent in the Ukiyo-e style, and both painted the Kabuki dancers and young women that did make up the Ukiyo-e. Many people assume that Hokusai was Hiroshige’s mentor and teacher however this is exactly true, in fact I would classify them more as rivals. Although Hokusai produced much more artwork then Hiroshige it is thought the Hiroshige to be the more successful artist of the two. I saw they are rivals because rising artists in the beginning of the 19^th century were improving upon the old masters of the art style like Hokusai.

            Many great series of art came from these two artists such as Hokusai’s most popular Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, and Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido. Hokusai was known by many names during his time, however he is most famously known by Katsushika Hokusai by which name he produced most of his best and most famous works at the age of 60. This contrasts Hiroshige who only took the name of his master Utagawa and reached the peek of his success in 1833 at the age of 36. 

The Great Wave - Hokusai

Self Portrait - Hiroshige

Self Portrait - Hokusai

Goten-Yama Hill - Hokusai

Full Moon Over Mountain Landscape - Hiroshige

From Fifty-Three Stations on the Tokaido - Hiroshige

The New Design of Write and the Four

As the twentieth century rolled around new forms of art were being introduced to the world. While Art Nouveau was still a dominating style in graphics artists from all disciplines looked to other forms of expressing their styles. Most of these interests were fueled by the technological and industrial advances of the time. Many artists kept in mind the fundamentals of Art Nouveau by trying to break away from the fixed design styles of natural and historical concepts and create new abstract or non-conceptual designs. Germany Scotland and Austria were the main hubs during this time for designing new styles of artwork that would portray the social, economic, and cultural changes of the time.

            One such example of this was American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose geometric design style focusing on spatial organization was just reaching the eyes of European designers and artists. To Wright, space was the most important element of design, this came about when he worked with his friend on a printing press. Working on the press taught him many valuable lessons about space and how negative space can be used effectively. He used blank space as boundaries that keep his work organized as well as to combined elements for his design to work together. His works during this time brought him to the head of the modern movement which influenced many others.

            In Scotland, Wright’s work was inspiring a group of individuals who would later become known as the Four. J. Herbert McNair, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and sisters’ Margret and Frances Macdonald all attended the Glasgow School of Art where they brought about a new style of geometric art influenced by Wright’s design style. Because this new style had never been seen before in Scotland, art scholars and observers were furious with the Four. Editor of The Studio however loved their boldness and traveled to Glasgow to publish articles about them reminding everyone that the purpose of design was to attract attention and that this new design style did exactly that. Through these articles the Four became revered around Europe but were very much looked past in Britain.

Mackintosh designed this poster for the Glasgow School of Fine Art,
that caused outrage among its observers.

Wright used geometric shapes in his borders as seen above.
This style was used to create eye appealing perimeters for the designer to work in.

This is an example of Wright's rectangular design used to help different
elements of the whole piece to work together more efficiently.